in this law. >> rolling disaster. >> i have a constituent. he received this cancellation letter. the president knew that these letters were coming. >> we are talking strictly about the 14 million people in the individual market. >> jay carney at the briefing effectively said -- >> there are going to be changes brought about by the affordable care act to create minimum standards. >> they can't be dropped for a richer package of benefits. >> maternity care, mental health services. >> this is government-run health care. >> i'll never stop fighting to help more hard-working americans know the economic security of health care. ♪ >> don't you worry. we will get to health care momentarily. but it is a very busy day in the capitol with a double dose of major congressional hearings, and challenges on twin fronts for the president. issue number one. oversight of the nsa. you are looking live right now

at the house intelligence committee holding a hearing on that very issue. witnesses include the director of national intelligence, james clapper, who sounded a wri note on the outrage over u.s. international spy efforts. >> i have to say, chairman rodgers, some of this reminds me a lot of the classic movie "kasa blanka," my god, there is gambling going on here. the same thing. >> indeed it is. the president faces an uproar including from chancellor mer l merkel, whose cell phone was tapped. the administration has denied the president knew the extent of the spying. and the president said last night he has ordered a fuel review. in an interview on the new fusion network. >> the national security operations generally have one person, and that is to make sure the american people are safe and i'm making good decisions and i'm the final user of all the

intelligence they gather. what we have seen over the last several years is their capacities continue to develop, and expand, and that's why i'm initiating now a review to make sure that what they're able to do doesn't necessarily mean what they should be doing. >> and today the president and his administration are also, of course, facing heightened scrutiny on his health care law. in a warmup for testimony tomorrow by hhs secretary kathleen sebelius, today's hot seat belonged to medicare administrator, marlin tavenner, the federal official who oversees the new health insurance exchanges. and she became the first senior official to apologize for the troubled rollout. >> to the millions of americans who have attempted to use healthcare.gov to shop and enroll in health care coverage, i want to apologize to you, that the website has not worked as well as it should. i want to assure you that healthcare.gov can and will be fixed and we are working around the clock to deliver the shopping experience that you deserve. >> now, you didn't think that

would be enough for congressional republicans, did you? no, indeed. they have already moved on to their newest, latest favorite line of attack. >> if you like your health care plan, you can keep it. is that a true statement? >> the white house.gov website says if you want to keep the health insurance you've got, you can keep it. and now they're being told they can't. that's a lie. >> yeah, that's the one. the claim that millions of americans are losing the insurance they know and love. ms. tavener did come with an answer when she was allowed to give one and the white house weighed in on the effects of the affordable care act on the 5% who currently purchase on the individual market. >> that market has been like the wild west. they could throw you off, they could jack up your premiums. they could change your coverage. the fact is that millions of americans who have been subject to the whims and vague arrestees

of this individual insurance market are going to have security they never had before. >> bonus, it's going to lower everyone's health care costs when people with those shoddy plans upgrade and no longer end up in the emergency room for care. so let's all calm down and work together to get the law up and running. right, speaker boehner? >> there is no way to fix this monstrosity. >> thank you for that. and a very happy halloween to you, mr. speaker. joining us onset, i'm delighted to welcome msnbc contributor, joy reid, of the grio.com and msnbc political analyst, our very own black sock r sock roties. michael eric dyson. this week they say the president is a liar so i guess they are making progress in the way they're moving forward on the affordable care act. >> what was interesting about the hearings today and the questions from republicans, they had to do less with sort of the actual operation of the affordable care act.

and more to do with sort of relitigating their complaints about there being an affordable care act. you have the chairman, i believe, of the ranking member of the chairman of the house ways and means committee say the problem is over the law. the law itself is bad. so therefore, all of our sort of points about the website and things not working, we don't really care about the website. we still just hate the law so we're going to find ways to question ms. tavenner, to relitigate that. >> professor dyson, speaker boehner claims there is no way to fix this monstrosity. one of the things you never hear is the monstrosity of preaffordable care act market, where three quarters of medical bankruptcies happen to people with insurance. i mean, isn't that a monstrosity? >> oh, it's a horrible monstrosity. and speaking of halloween, we were tricked and not treated to what we should have been treated. as you indicated already, martin, most people who were poor used the emergency ward as health care maintenance. what does that do? it jacks up the prices exponentially, because by the time their diseases are caught

upon scrutiny or scan in an emergency ward, you've got to pay now hundreds of thousands, if not millions of more dollars collectively for those people. yes, absolutely, the preexisting conditions of being a woman or being poor without health care, the individual market will be accommodated, because now 1 million people will have insurance through medicaid, and those with individual abilities to pay will have a better plan. those who are grandfathered in, had preexisting insurance already, won't be penalized to the degree that the boehner and others have suggested. >> they say this is a monstrosity. >> it's not a monstrosity. the monstrosity is the inability of americans to afford to be able to take for granted what people in europe afford -- can take for granted. that is, if i get sick, i can go to the hospital, they don't ask me where is your card, let me see if you have enough money to pay. and we know hundreds of thousands of people have died as a result of being checked for insurance they don't possess, or they have been -- their health has been ruined as a result of lack of access.

that's the real monday trosty. >> yeah, and, of course, we saw something of a monstrosity earlier with ms. tavenner, but tomorrow is the big game, the one they have been waiting for and longing for. kathleen sebelius. what do they do to her tomorrow? >> it's sort of a strange political strategy. you take a political figure that 90% of americans probably have no idea who this person is. and you sort of make them now the symbol of your discontent. it's not a smart political strategy in the sense that after tomorrow's hearing -- blockbuster though it may be, even if they produce numerous youtube sound bites, 90% of people will still not have any idea. god bless her. so you have picked an enormous target -- >> what if they get her head on a platter, what if they force her to resign? >> here is the down side and this is going to be very difficult to break to our conservative friends. there will still be an affordable care act. even if kathleen sebelius was taken away by martians tomorrow. if they could get her to resign. if they can get the entire administration of barack obama

to resign. the affordable care act is law. and what we still haven't gotten to is acceptance of the fact of this act having passed, having passed scrutiny by the supreme court. it will exist no matter how many people they grill on their committees. >> okay. professor dyson, republicans are focused on the horror that people will be forced to get better care than they currently have. >> that's correct. >> and i would like you to take a listen to this. >> analysis has shown that if you're between 18 and 34 right now, about half of the people can get high-quality health care for less than 50 bucks a month. less than your cell phone bill, less than your cable bill. and about 70% can get it for less than 100 bucks a month. >> but here's the point, professor dyson. that's what the koch brothers are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on preventing young people from doing. preventing young people from taking it up. >> absolutely. as opposed to putting it in a fund, set aside for those who they claim will not be able to take advantage of it. why not use that koch brothers

money to permit them to afford the very care they claim won't be available under obama care? i love watching the president there. i'm reminded of sade's "smooth operator." he's clear, calm, smooth, telling the truth. less than 50 bucks a month. what your phone bill would cost. here is a man breaking down in the digestible form, a complicated thing like the affordable care act. and the reality is, as joy reid is saying, we can't say it enough. that it is law. it has been enshrined. it is there, regardless of their feelings, they can't remove it. if they co starred with sandra bullock in "gravity" and george clooney, they can't remove it. >> thank you for that. joy, i just wanted to -- one other question with you, though. this debate about individuals on the private insurance market losing their plan, it seems as though the republican preference now is that if your plan gets worse, right, you should be able to keep it. as opposed to the president's

proposal, which is if your plan gets worse, it doesn't qualify, because it doesn't have those ten important essential elements that the affordable care act enshrines for all of us. >> yeah, it's a strange argument. what they're essentially saying, if you have really bad but expensive insurance, that has high co-pays and deductibles, really horrible. >> and you can be tossed off at any moment. >> your doctors can resign at any moment. this is the worst possible insurance. but at least you have something. if you are forced to change that for better insurance, that this is somehow an assault on your liberty. they're saying, foinstance -- the only example, if you are feeding your kids extruded chicken nuggets and horrible, made of chicken paste. and the government says you know what, from now on, it has to be chicken breast. well, you have now assaulted my liberty. i have a right to feed my kids -- you have assaulted my liberty. it doesn't make sense. we're saying you're going to get a better product for a lower price. how that is an assault on your liberty, rather than your current policy being an assault on your dignity and good health, i really am not sure. >> because they're in bed with

the insurance company. they're not into health care. they're into insurance position. >> professor, before we go, i want wanted to get your thoughts on what's happened with regard to the nsa and the issue of spying on over 35 world leaders. and senator dianne feinstein saying it's a big problem, and the president apparently not knowing that angela merkel's cell phones, both tapped. how damaging is that for this president's status as someone who is in control and in touch and one we can trust? >> yeah, it's a slippery slope. because on the one hand, you want to look like you know what's going on. but you can't say the butler did it. this is something that you're responsible for, right? it's in your house. colombo can't come in and save you. neither can pj rourke or whoever else can be -- i think the problem here is that the president has been talking about transparency and clarity, and he's got to get ahold of what's going on here. angela merkel doesn't want to come to the white house because you've been snooping and spying on her. i've been trying to listen to see if they have been on my two

phones. if they're not on my phones and world leaders spy on each other all of the time, we can make him a scapegoat. he has to be culpable and responsible, but at the same time, it's a lot more pervasive than we thought. >> isn't this about the permanent intelligence bureaucracy? and we learned president bush was trying to get involved in invading iraq. i thought they're spying on our allies to see if they'll vote for the law. there is this bureaucracy and when you give an agency or any entity power it never gives it back willingly. i think it is up to congress, decrepid though they are, to reign and continue after this one. >> which means it will never happen. it will be permanent and go on. >> absolutely. professor eric michael die son and joy reid, wish you could join me for the whole broadcast. don't let republicans tell you they have a magical alternative to the affordable care act. our next guest, a democratic congressman, is having none of it. ♪

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the highlight of today's health care hearing had to be an exchange involving a democratic congressman who decided to take a gop colleague to task for having the audacity to suggest that republicans have ever offered a viable alternative to the affordable care act. >> it's a false choice to say it's obama care or nothing. there are numerous proposals, including the one that i'm a co sponsor. >> are you serious, what you just said? are you really serious? after what we have gone through? after what we have gone through in the last three-and-a-half years? have you -- you can sit there

and say that you had a legitimate alternative? after these years? we've gone through 44 votes. 48 votes now. of you trying to dismantle this legislation. you call that cooperation? i don't -- >> joining us now was a man sitting front and center for that exchange. democrat joe crowley of new york. good afternoon, sir. >> hey, martin. great to be with you again. >> now, you were sitting next to congressman pass equal of new jersey when that exchange occurred. >> right. >> did you begin to wonder if you started hallucinating or perhaps someone had spiked your morning coffee with rohypnol when you heard a republican claim with clear face, they had offered viable alternatives to the affordable care act. >> well, i think, martin, that congressman pass crawl, i think, expressed the exacerbation and frustration i think we as democrats are feeling about our

republican colleagues. you know, if this wasn't a serious hearing, we would all be laughing right now. because we all know that they're not about fixing the problem as democrats are. they're about trying to find a problem they can exploit. they're exploiting this as best they can. as i pointed out, the attention of the other side of the aisle, the republicans, is not to fix the problem. they want to undo -- unravel the whole, as mr. reichert said in the hearing, he wants to take a chain saw to this. >> you've anticipated my next question, congressman. >> okay. >> because as you're saying, things didn't seem to get much better. the hearing moved on from drunk karaoke to the texas chain saw massacre with, as you said, david reichert of washington saying we should take a chain saw to the act. now, can you please explain how making sure that insurance companies cannot deny coverage, because of preexisting conditions, how insuring that all americans can have health insurance.

how is that such an horrendous thing? >> well, i think that's the problem they have been tripping over all along. they know there are wonderful things in this bill. and yet they can't bring themselves to embrace it at all. in fact, what i said today, to the witness was that to understand that they're not here to see you or this law succeed. understand that. the questions they're asking you about the rollout, or about how poorly it was done, they could care less. they don't care how poorly it was done, because they just want to exploit the issue. you know, what we are about is finding solutions to this problem. and that is the website can be fixed. we know that. it's a website. >> yeah. >> but their broken agenda can't be. they have to throw their broken agenda out. they have to take a chain saw to their agenda. >> i guess you would accept, given what the president has said throughout his tenure, both first term and now the second, that he's always wanted a smart government.

an effective government. you would accept, i'm sure, that this has not helped that particular ambition. >> no, in many respects, it continues the dumbing down and let's go out and try to exploit, you know, an issue that is highly exploitable. let's face it. we understand that. but the end of the day, martin, what people have to understand is that for the first time, people will be able to afford insurance in this country. people have insurance are going to get better insurance. because of this law. and we can't lose sight of that. our republican colleagues want us to lose sight of it, they want to distract us. they want to do what they can do undermine this law. and our job is to see this law through, just like when medicare part d was passed on the republican-controlled house and by republican president. democrats didn't sit on hands and say don't sign up, we helped our constituents. would i like to see one republican do that. i haven't seen any do that. >> so would i. today also maximum marks the one-year anniversary of

hurricane sandy. how do the residents in your district react, sir, when they hear that republicans like tom coburn, who voted against a single cent of funding coming to new york, yet come here to the city to raise money for their own campaigns. >> i think they probably have the same reaction i would, martin. in other words, we welcome them to new york. new york is a welcoming city. but you know what, we would like them to go to staten island, the rock aways, go to long island. see the damage done from sandy that's not repaired yet, that lives are still overturned. they're not back together get. and when a disaster struck their state, i didn't say, well, they didn't help us. therefore i'm not going to help them. i don't believe america should ever turn its back, congress should never turn its back on suffering americans. that's what they did when new york and new jersey and connecticut and pennsylvania were suffering. but martin, it's important to note, we didn't do the same thing to colorado. we never would. we didn't do it to any other part of the country. that's the lesson to be learned here. >> congressman joe crowley,

thank you for never doing that. coming up, senator rand paul stars in gafika. >> in the movie gafica in the not too distant future -- >> almost verbatim in the wikipedia entry. in the not too distant future -- building animatronics

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♪ from science fiction of the 1990s to women's rights of the 1890s, here are today's top lines. don't be cheeky. >> conservatives think that liberals are dumb. but liberals think that conservatives are evil. >> in the movie "gattaca," in the not too distant, eugenics is common -- >> that line appears almost verbatim in the wikipedia entry on "got at that". >> plays a primary role. >> dna plays the primary role in determining social class. hey, that's what rand paul said. >> are you going to plagiarize the whole thing for us? do you have any thoughts of your own on this matter? >> vincent freeman is conceived the old fashioned way. >> my name is vincent, vincent

anton freeman, and a faith birth or whatever you want to call it. >> genetic discrimination. >> vincent faces genetic discrimination and prejudice, a borrowed ladder. >> in your lifetime, much of your potential, or maybe lack thereof, will be known simply by swabbing the inside of your cheek. >> won't be cheeky. >> imagine a world where there is no interview, they take a swab of your cheek. >> i don't want to know. >> in the process, will we perhaps eliminate something? some part of our human papillomaness? some part of our specialness if we seek perfection? >> i'm sorry i was born with this perfect bone structure, that my hair looks better done up with gel and mousse. >> my hope is we don't lose the appreciation that a miracle springs forth from tiny strands of dna. >> do we have the strength of

character to resist a world where eugenics is practiced voluntarily? >> thanks, senator. >> let's get right to our panel, joining us now in new york, national reporter for msnbc.com,errin car moan, and my friend and colleague, co host of "the cycle," krystal ball. krystal, this scare mongering of eugenics -- i don't know what that sound is -- >> i think it's the eugenics alert. they're coming for us. everybody prepare. >> okay, thank you. so you know, i kind of -- it reminded me when i was listening to rand paul of the kind of culture wars of the 1980s which tried to rehearse the idea that if a woman had had a right to choose, then the doors would be flung open to endless abortion, infantside and euthanasia. >> the last time i polled folks in virginia and it is my home state, eugenics was not really at the top of the list of their sort of daily concerns.

of course, neither is anti sodomy laws, which is another focus of ken cuccinelli and rand paul, but that's another story for another day. the only thing i can figure here is it's hard for, quote, unquote, libertarians, right, to square their so-called love of freedom with an overbearing federal government that wants to tell women what to do with their bodies and essentially force them to give birth. so i think this eugenics thing is a way to say, well, if we don't force all women to have births, then the government is going to go to this place of eugenics. that's the only thing i can figure. it's a very bizarre situation. >> good try. erin, ken cuccinelli has already been struggling with female voters, in the most recent polls down a whopping 24 points. now he's got rapid paul going off about science fiction and the reason behind denying a woman control of her own body. is that a way to win back female voters? >> it's not the way to win back female voters.

if you're looking at this double digit gap continuing to yawning and continuing to grow, these are people who supported personhood amendments. they are trying to -- ken cuccinelli himself is actively involved in shutting down clinics that provide health care to women. i mean, it's happening every day. you don't have to look like rand paul did towards a distoppian reality. ken cuccinelli is already trying to do it in virginia. >> didn't they learn anything from the last election? >> they did not. you can see them doing -- i look at the news out of texas this week, look at virginia. every day brings a new list of regulations, restrictions. a draconian abortion restriction, trying to shut down clinics. i think that they think that this is a base strategy that there are people who really worried about women having reproductive freedom. >> and there was a more moderate potential choice in virginia for the republican party. bill bowling, lieutenant governor under bob mcdonnell, much more centrist guy and probably would have had a better shot in this election. but because it was the activists

that controlled the primary process in virginia, as they do -- it's the story we have seen play out time and time again. they ended up with this guy who is an extremist, and who a purple state like virginia, they have no interest in having this guy run. >> and also a lieutenant governor who has said that planned parenthood is worse than the kkk. if you're a woman that gets her care at planned parenthood, that doesn't resonate with you. >> let me quote what wendy davis said following the federal judge's ruling yesterday. which prevented the closure of these clinics, that, of course, the texas governor, rick perry had been hoping to close. she says, texas families are stronger and healthier when women across the state have access to quality health care. i'm not surprised by the judge's ruling. but didn't that ruling expose the singular lie of that whole campaign, that it had absolutely nothing to do with women's health? >> well -- >> none -- nothing whatsoever. >> right. quite the opposite. >> yeah, i mean, i think the judge did a great job, at least in acknowledging that there is

absolutely no valid reason, no medical reason, no scientific, public health reason, to require these things. these -- >> admitting procedures, is what we're talking about. >> yes. very similar laws passed in virginia, as well, and states around the country. i think when you actually evaluate this, besides their phony pretext this is to protect women. as crystal pointed out in her monologue in "the cycle" there are women now already seeking the equivalent of back-alley abortions by going to mexico. this is not about a concern for women's health. >> already, yeah. and just to provide a little background on the admitting privileges, mississippi passed a very similar law. mississippi, a state where there is only oh one remaining abortion clinic. the providers there went to all of the surrounding hospitals and basically and asked to have admitting privileges and basically none of them would even consider allowing them. so all these laws are, they have no concern for women's health. it's all about shutting down abortion clinics. that's all it's about.

>> and in mississippi it was also found unconstitutional. so luckily the judiciary is finding somewhat -- >> some relief. thank you both so much for joining us. coming up, standing her ground. the mother of trayvon martin goes before lawmakers, and indeed, this conversation is far from over oh. >> what kind of message are we sending if our kids -- because remember, these are our kids in our communities. don't feel safe. [ male announcer ] when it comes to doing what you love,

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trayvon martin, testifying earlier today on capitol hill, about so-called stand your ground laws. these laws, i with are now on the books in no less than 22 states, have made it much easier for people to claim self defense when they fire their weapons. but they make it too easy. that's the question right now. and joining us now is lucy mcbath, who also testified before the senate today about the loss of her son jordan, who was killed by a man that later claimed he was justified under florida's stand your ground law and also representative marsha fudge, democrat of ohio. if i might begin with you, ms. mcbath, we would like to express, obviously, our condolences for your son's loss and also our gratitude that you are speaking out so courageously on this deeply troubling issue. and i would like our audience to take a listen to some of your testimony earlier today. >> but you can never really know my boy.

because an angry man who owned a gun kept it close at hand and chose to demonstrate unbridled hatred one balmy evening for reasons i will never understand. these laws empowered his prejudiced beliefs and subsequent rage over my son's own life. >> the end of your son's life began as an argument about playing loud music inside a car, is that right? >> yes. >> tell us about that. >> well, the boys had come from a day at shopping at the mall. it was the day after thanksgiving, black friday, in jacksonville, florida. and they had simply stopped at a gas station, a convenience store, to get cigarettes, candy, things of that nature, as they were on their way to jordan's father's house. and they were going to play video games. and in the time that they were

sitting there, michael dunn comes beside them, drives beside them, and tells them to turn the music down, the so-called thug music, he calls it. and the children turned the music down. then jordan asked that the music be turned back up, because -- in jordan's mind, you know, they're not doing anything wrong. they're just playing their music. >> and it's inside their car. >> inside their car. >> and what happens next? >> well, michael dunn was agitated and angry that they weren't turning the music down, and he decided that, you know, they needed to pay attention and do as he instructed them to do. and an argument ensued between michael dunn and my son. and michael dunn simply says, "you can't talk to me that way." he pulls his .9 millimeter gun out of his glove box, and he shot ten rounds into the car.

and three of those bullets killed my son instantly. >> and i should say that nobody in the car that your son was traveling in was armed. is that right? >> absolutely. there were no guns, no alcohol. nothing of the nature that could be intimidating or threatening to anyone. >> congresswoman, since firearms are so ubiquitous in this country, do laws like stand your ground make sense if they actually encourage people to use their guns whenever they feel, quote, threatened? >> absolutely not, martin. i find it most interesting that the same people that consistently talk about people being accountable, taking responsibility for themselves, have now decided that there should be no standard of responsibility, no standard of accountability. if you are in a place where they think you can legally be. and just decide that someone is threatening you in some way.

i mean, martin, think about it. we teach police officers, those who are trained with weapons, to only use that force which is necessary. but we are now absolving everyday citizens of the same standard of responsibility and accountability. we have decided that any level of violence is okay. that everyone should be able to have a gun and defend themselves. what happened to humanity, number one. number two, what has happened to the people who have all these years talked about responsibility and now there is none. something is very wrong in america, martin. when we allow people to carry guns, when we know, in fact, that the more guns that are on the streets, the higher the incidence of homicide is. but yet they would deny the data. they would ignore the data and say, you know what, everything is going to be okay. as long as everyone has a gun. we have to stop buying into that foolishness. >> absolutely, we have to. ms. mcbath, the man charged in your son's death has written some letters that made it out to

the public. in one of them, he expresses his hope that the trial will move to counties that are, quote, predominantly white and republican, and supporters of gun rights. to ask you, how much hope do you hold that justice will be served in the case of your son's death? >> well, we have to believe that justice will be served. the justice system that we have here in this country is the best that we have. the two cases are very different. they're very similar, very different. the letters that michael dunn wrote are very painful. they're very hard to read. it's very hard to understand that -- how he could have such disheartening feels and opinions and ideas about people that are not like him. if we are posed with a trial

being moved, if any of those things should happen, then we will have to deal with that at that time. whatever comes out of the letters, whatever happens because of michael dunn's letters, that will be of his own doing. we are not insinuating anything that's going to be racially biased. we have decided that we are not going to buy into any of that. that we are not going to incite the country to racism. that what jordan's father and i are doing is for all children. it's for everybody. and we are not going to let his opinions and ideas about race, about our son, or about what he's done determine the course of our future. >> thank you so much for your grace, your courage and your dignity. congresswoman, the hearing was originally scheduled, as you know, to take place on september the 17th, one day after the navy yard shooting. but i have to ask you this

question. were you surprised that only about four senators actually decided to attend today? >> i'm not surprised at all. i listened to a woman who lost her son. and i tell you, martin, it would be laughable, if not so serious, that someone who talks about wanting to get a fair trial would believe the only way to do that is to have an all-white jury. where, in fact, in today's hearing they talk about the fact that stand your ground laws benefit african-americans. it is the height of hypocrisy. for people to use race in an environment that is already charged because of the death of an innocent young man, to use race to say, you know what, something is wrong with them. i don't want to see another trial. where the person who was killed is on trial, and not the person who did the killing. >> absolutely. representative marsha fudge and lucy mcbath, thank you both. and ms. mcbath, thank you so much. >> it was a pleasure.

thank you. >> and we'll be right back in a moment. [ male announcer ] what if a small company became big business overnight? ♪ like, really big... then expanded? ♪ or their new product tanked? ♪ or not? what if they embrace new technology instead? ♪ imagine a company's future with the future of trading. company profile. a research tool on thinkorswim. from td ameritrade.

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if the president knew that these letters were coming, and still indicated that you could keep your health care plan if you liked it -- now, that raises some serious questions about the sales job of obama care. >> eric cantor's history i don't knowics aside, the shock of receiving a letter that says your health insurance policy is about to be cancelled should not be dismissed lightly. but neither should the reason for why the affordable care act no longer allows many of these policies on the individual market. because they're not very good for your health. take this harvard medical school study from 2007, which found that while two-thirds of bankruptcies were due to high medical bills, about three quarters of those medical bankruptcies involved people with insurance. in other words, it's often people with medical insurance who are forced to declare

bankruptcy, because of high medical bills. now, why is that? after all, the report says most medical debtors were well-he d well-educated, owned homes and had middle class occupations. two reasons, according to the authors. many were so sick they lost their jobs and therefore their insurance. also, many of these plans came with onerous co-pays, deductibles and,/or loopholes. in other words, the coverage turned out to be meaningless. joining us is josh barrow, politics editor for business insider and jared bernstein, who is senior fellow at the center on budget and policy priorities. josh, nobody, you nor i nor jerryd is suggesting this episode is a shining moment for the administration. but the point of these regulations is to create basic standards of care for everyone. >> yeah, et cetera one of the points of this. so one of the key reasons people's premiums are going up, coverage is going to be better. also the premiums are going up

because you have to get the coverage even if you have a preexisting -- >> so there is a protection for the consumer. >> right. in california, they did a study and found 27% -- there was about a 27% premium increase, attributable to that. so that's bad for you if you're a young, healthy person who has a high income and won't qualify for a subsidy. but if you're sick and couldn't get health insurance, that's good for you. and the law overall is meant to make the health insurance system work better for america as a whole. so that's creating a lot of winners in people who were really screwed by the system before. but there are some losers. the thing is, you have to weigh those things against each other. the critics are not really doing that. they're picking these sort of unicorns, these young, healthy, 27-year-old freelancers with high incomes who indeed will pay more and the old system worked pretty well for those people. there just aren't that many of those people. >> unfortunately, there aren't. jerryd, the individual health care market has always been volatile and subject to the vagaries of medical insurance companies. and you never had a guarantee that the coverage you bought

today would be available and for the same price next year. wouldn't that message be less shocking to policyholders, were the republicans engaging in this debate honestly? >> yes. and, in fact, it's some of those issues that are at the bottom of this dust-up. an argument, by the way, that we were having about three years ago. >> i just read your blog. you write about it in detail. >> i remember it well because i was working for the administration back then. look, the idea here is that in order to enable people to keep their coverage that they got on the individual market, which is shaki shaky the way you and josh were just describing, some of these plans were grandfathered in. so that happens to have been the case. but if those plans have changed for the worse since then, in ways that undermine the very consumer protections that are at the heart of the affordable care act, then they're no longer consistent with the act. if their co-pays have gone up a lot. if they have cancelled the coverage of certain conditions.

if they don't cover preexisting conditions. they are now out of sink wi sin with the affordable care act and changed since they were grandfathered, at which point they are nongrandfathered and should be cancelled. so if the president were speaking more accurately, and you're right, there has been a messaging problem here. if you like your plan and your plan doesn't change in a way that makes it a lot worse, on the individual market, you can keep it. and remember, 271 million people are not the ones we're talking about here. they're the ones who get their coverage through their employer or through the government. the individual market is relatively small. >> yeah. josh, we have discovered the republican plan alternative. ted cruz has it. and basically, it involves marrying a managing director at -- is it goldman sachs? >> goldman sachs, yes. >> yeah, that's the answer, is it? >> right, yeah. the "new york times" did this story four years ago that the plan that goldman sachs provides to its senior executives at the managing director level and higher costs $40,000 a year.

now, to give some perspective, at that time a typical family plan would cost about 15 or $16,000. so it's more than double the normal cost. i don't know what a $40,000 a year health plan gets you. i'm sure it's some pretty great things. the cruz's get to deduct all of that $40,000 for tax or that income is never taxed. that's a subsidy worth about $15,000, more than it costs to cover a family of four under medicaid. so this is a crazy feature of our current health care system. and i would note, the cruz's are probably not going to get to keep their health care plan. there will be an excise tax on these extremely high-cost plans that will push employers like goldman sachs to give their employees smaller health plans, pay them more in cash. so i think the president shouldn't have said if you like your health plan you can keep it. one of the key objectives was to change the way in which americans are covered in ways that cover more people, more reliably, at lower cost. and so some people will change plans because of that. >> absolutely. josh barrow, jared bernstein, i wish we had more time.

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thanks so much for joining us this afternoon. coming up right now, my friend and colleague, "the ed show" with my friend, ed schultz. good evening, americans, and welcome to "the ed show" live from new york. let's get to work. ♪ one of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of -- >> reagan changed the ideological trajectory of a country. >> we've got great unfinished business in this country. we are behind every country, pretty nearly, in europe. and this matter of medical care for our citizens. >> but that fight is worth fighting for! >> obama care is the test of this new liberalism. >> insurance is real important.